Quotes Flashcards
“A Sister, dipped in blood”
Chapter 2
Sinister imagery
Religious
“I hunger to commit the act of touch”
Chapter 2
Touch deprived
Forbidden
“He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister”
Chapter 2
Division between men and women
Lack of community and support between women
Isolation makes one weaker
“trained pig’s on its hind legs”
Chapter 4
Animal Farm reference
Hierarchy
Dystopian Society
“a small defiance of rule”
Chapter 4
Seeking excitement
Restrictive society
Power of female bodies
“We are a society dying…of too much choice”
Chapter 5
Choice - indecision - unpredictable
“memento mori”
Chapter 6
“Remember you have to die”
Lack of choice
Sinister
Death
“The night is mine”
Chapter 7
Personal
Identity
Only possession
“Help me”
Chapter 8
May Day from French word meaning help me
Aid
“men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits”
Chapter 9
Ironic
Slept around casually but it isn’t a casual act
“The stains on the mattress. Like dried flower petals. Not recent. Old love”
Chapter 9
Old sex
Lost innocence
No longer fertile
“But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men”
Chapter 13
Romanticism
Objectification
Sexualising women
“Her fault, her fault, her fault”
Chapter 13
Guilt tripping
Women blamed for men’s actions
“I keep knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day”
Chapter 14
Identity
Important
“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”, “Give me children, or else I die. Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her”
Chapter 15
Bible quotes
Religious government
“Big-bellied sails”
Chapter 16
Pregnancy imagery
Fertility
“Below it the Commander is fucking”, “kissing is forbidden between us. This makes it bearable”
Chapter 16
Impersonal
Lack of intimacy
“nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from”
Chapter 18
Loss of love
Lack of touch or intimacy
Human nature
“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see”
Chapter 21
Shared pain
Struggle alone
Isolation
“It is a reconstruction now, in my head”
Chapter 23
Unreliable narrator
Word of mouth
“swelling genitalia of the flowers? The fruiting body”
Chapter 25
Fertility
Natural imagery
“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze”
Chapter 27
Isolation
Faux freedom
Dystopian
Control
“she’d decided to prefer women”
Chapter 28
Homosexuality
Not completely accepted in 80s
“like Martians. There was a dreamlike quality to them; they were too vivid, too at odds with their surroundings”
Chapter 28
Unreal
Fantasy
Life was alien
“Fucking pigs”, “Fucking bleeders”, “She liked being more outrageous than I was, more rebellious”
Chapter 28
Mother
Colloquial and taboo language
Rebellion
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” - “Dont let the bastards grind you down”
Chapter 29
Written in cupboard
School boy joke
“We were falling women”, “God is love”
Chapter 35
Love
Past
Female tragedy
Religion
“I’m a refugee from the past”
Chapter 35
Past
Regret
Lost
“a man made of darkness”, “I made that up”
Chapter 40
In her head
Unreliable narrator
“I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments”
Chapter 41
Fragmentation - post modern
Heightens sadness
Her lack of control
Relationship between reader and narrator
“He has become an it”
Chapter 44
Dehumanising
Coping mechanism
The effects of their society
“the new one”
Chapter 44
Dehumanising
Interchangeable
Objects
“In my lap is a handful of crumpled stars”
Chapter 46
Lost hope
Destiny
Fate
Broken dreams
“The Underground Femaleroad”
Historical notes
Link to Underground Railroad
The escape of African American slaves from South to North
